Google Photos update brings electronic stabilization for videos, new photo editing tools: Here’s how to use them

You can now use the Google Photos app to stabilize your shaky videos and make them smooth.

Google Photos is one of the more interesting apps available on Android and iOS devices. It s a multi-purpose app that serves as a gallery, lets you organize your photos and videos, and also lets you edit them. Now, the Android version of the app has been updated with interesting features, such as new photo editing tools, electronic stabilization for videos, and more.

The Google Photos app already lets you edit your photos — crop, change orientation, add filters, tweak brightness, contrast, add tint, create a collage of photos, or videos. Now, in the latest update, Google has added a new set of dynamic filters using which you can quickly enhance your photos with one tap. The app also comes with advanced editing tools that allow you to tweak color, lighting and more. Let s look at these editing tools and how you can enhance your photos and videos.

How to add use Deep Blue filter in Google Photos

There are times when we want to capture a perfect scene, be it the deep blue sea or the clear blue skies. However, the camera sensor on most smartphones aren t able to capture the accurate color and scenes, as visible to the human eye. Now, one of the innovative additions that come as a part of this update is the Deep Blue slider, using which you can add color to water and sky.

I ve recently been to Hong Kong and China, and as my usual drill, I like capturing photos of clear blue skies, the horizon, the sea 35,000 feet below and more. The photos that I captured using my HTC One M8 weren t punchy enough and I always felt the need of having a better camera phone. But now with the Google Photos update, I revisited the photos I had captured, and added some effects. Now, they look much better than before.

Adding these effects is a fairly simple process. Open Google Photos, select the photo you want to edit, and tap on the edit button (pencil-like icon) second on the bottom left. Now, along the bottom half, you have a strip full of filters — auto, west, palma, metro, eiffel, blush, reel and more. Even after adding a certain filter, you can still make finer adjustments to the photos by tapping on the settings icon below. ALSO READ: This new Google Photos advertisement takes a dig at iPhones with 16GB storage

And for photos where you want to add Deep Blue filter, just open the photo, tap on edit option, followed by settings and under color, you have the deep blue slider at the bottom. Just move the slider to the right to add the color, or to the left to minimize the intensity.

As for the results, below are three photos that I edited to add the deep blue filter. Now, while the edited photo does look good, slight amount of graininess is visible, whereas on the photo, the blue color was also added to the plane s wing. However, the overall photo does look better, despite the fact that it was taken on a low-resolution 4-megapixel (or UltraPixel) camera. In the third photo, the blue color on the sky isn t punchy enough, again, the overall photo quality is good. ALSO READ: Google Photos for Android update helps reclaim your smartphone s internal storage

Well, Google Photos is here to your rescue. The new update adds electronic stabilization feature and it works as expected. As usual, I used one of the videos I captured when the plane took off from Hong Kong, and it was quite shaky. To stabilize your videos, open Google Photos, select the video and tap on edit. Next, you have two options, one to stabilize and other to rotate the video. The stabilization and rendering process does take a bit of time, depending on how big the video is.

Google Photos was able to stabilize it to an extent where the annoying jerks were smoothened to a great extent. However, on closely observing the edited video, I did notice minor drop in frame-rate, but I guess that s how it works.

These nifty additions are good to make your otherwise dull and boring photos and videos look great. Do give these features a try and let us know if you find this guide helpful in the comments section below.

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